FWD: Investigators looking for exotic pets from store

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This article is from thestar.com.my

URL: http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2003/6/12/world/mpox & sec=world

 

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Thursday, June 12, 2003

Investigators looking for exotic pets from store

 

 

CHICAGO: Investigators trying to stop the first outbreak of monkeypox in the

Western Hemisphere scoured seven US states for dozens of prairie dogs and other

exotic pets sold by a distributor in Illinois.

 

Health officials announced a total of five confirmed human cases of the disease

& #8211; four in Wisconsin and one in Illinois. No one has died of the outbreak.

Another 48 possible cases have been reported.

 

Monkeypox, which causes fever, rash, chills and aches, is a milder relative of

smallpox and is usually found in Africa, where it has a mortality rate of 1% to

10%. US officials believe better nutrition and medical treatment probably will

prevent deaths.

 

There have been no instances of the disease spreading from human to human in

this outbreak.

 

However, some people infected each other in a 1997 outbreak in Africa that

afflicted hundreds.

 

Health and agriculture officials in Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania,

Texas, Ohio and South Carolina knocked on doors at homes and visited pet shops,

trying to track animals sold to individuals and other pet stores by Phil's

Pocket Pets.

 

The investigators were tracking rats, hedgehogs and other exotic pets, but the

focus was on prairie dogs, a rodent that authorities believe is transmitting the

disease to people.

 

“That's priority No 1, identifying those people who purchased prairie dogs from

this dealer,'' said Jeff Squibb, spokesman for the Illinois Department of

Agriculture.

 

The investigators were seeking people who had bought exotic pets distributed

since April by the Pocket Pets store, where a shipment of prairie dogs is

believed to have been infected by a Gambian giant rat imported from Africa.

 

The hunt was complicated by transfers of animals from dealer to dealer. & #8211;

AP

 

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